My horoscope for the new year looks promising, with "Mars especially energetic in my love life in July and August". I'm just glad it's not Saturn, because he never rings... arf.

Speaking of which, it's not been entirely quiet on the dating front here at Singleton Towers.

The tally over Christmas (not that I would be childish enough to keep score) was two phone number requests, one was an out-of-the-blue date invitation, and the other a leftover-from-online-dating boomerang.

The date invitation was only unexpected because I had thought the chap in question was gay, which either means my gaydar needs a serious retune, or it'll be a night of musical theatre.

The boomerang was soon dispensed with, and made me remember why I'd cancelled all my online subscriptions to Meet Your Worst Nightmare.com in the first place.

Even in this digital generation, there are boundaries, guys. You can't rock up to someone's email box and start flirting in lower case with spelling mistakes and addressing someone as sexy, when you haven't even met.

Perhaps it was the way that I wrote back - "That's Mrs Sexy to you, orc breath," - that made him finally realise he was being rejected.

The phone number requests seemed encouraging at first, but neither have resulted in anything more than me answering my mobile to unknown numbers, only to be offered a subscription to a newpaper.

"No, thank you," I told the salesman. "My mum gets your paper and sends me cuttings of all the relevant parenting articles anyway. And for the record, I do not spend all my single parent benefits on fags and booze, I invest them in scratch cards and donate to good causes like the National Lottery."

I mean, it does seem a bit pointless to go to the trouble of asking for someone's number, only for it to join the dark blue fluff and five pence pieces in a chap's trouser pocket. Why don't I just throw my own number away now and save us all some time in the future?

So I did a straw poll of two bloke friends to find out why men ask for your number and then never use it.

Friend number one, Dan, never actually got back to me.

Pal number two Gareth, although not entirely happy to carry the can for all bloke-kind, said: "The most obvious reason is nerves. It can be pretty intimidating calling a woman you don't know to chat about stuff in a painfully forced manner before hitting her with the big question... (I have removed this as it was unprintable, and has made me rethink my entire friendship with Gareth).

He continued: "That's way outside the comfort zone for some guys, even when the woman in question isn't a journo with a relationship column in a national newspaper with which to publicly eviscerate your every stuttering inanity."

So basically it's my own fault.

Although Gareth did reveal a bit more about what makes the average nerd tick. "Another classic reason is to put it off for a while, as you do with all challenges. Then it becomes too long since you met, and the opportunity slips away.

"Or a bloke doesn't call because in the cold (sober) light of day, starting a new relationship from scratch, can seem a bit, well, too much of an effort.

"Finally," he added, from a safe distance, "maybe he's not that into you, in which case he's clearly a numpty."

So there you have it. Children of a more intelligent life form in the future will read in their history books about how humans became extinct. "Homo sapiens eventually died out because human man couldn't be arsed to mate."

Thankfully Jesse's gone back to school this week, leaving me more time to contemplate my personal failings. But I've decided to accept the out-of-the-blue date, if only to save you all from yourselves. Sheesh, the things I do...